The Final Girls (2015)

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Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson and written by M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller. The film stars Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Adam DeVine, Thomas Middleditch,  Alia Shawkat, Alexander Ludwig, and Nina Dobrev.

Limited release in theaters, and VOD same day: October 9, 2015.

 

I liked this movie a lot. It's a very meta horror/comedy flick, and I'm not versed in horror at all, nor the meta horror subgenre.  But I would say that the unique part of the premise -- not just that the heroes enter the world of the movie-within-a-movie, but specifically that Max's meets a version of her dead mom in Nancy, the character her mom played many years ago -- is really, completely heartfelt and it's largely due to how well Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman convey the emotion of the situation.  And I vaguely gather (from reading a few reviews of this movie) that other meta horror flicks don't necessarily have this much heart, though they might be a bit more clever.

 

Trailer here. (Also, this reminds me: this is not "Final Girl (2014)", starring Abigail Breslin.)

[galax-arena]

I liked it, except I kept wanting Alexander Ludwig's character to die. He was just so dull. 

 

The latter part of the movie kinda lost its edge/focus for me, but the ending saved it. 

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Trailer here. (Also, this reminds me: this is not "Final Girl (2014)", starring Abigail Breslin.)

Thankfully! "Final Girl" was just awful on all levels. This one is good, though inexplicably PG-13, which would normally be fine, but not so much a meta horror of decidedly not PG-13 80s slashers. Oh, what could have been... Still, it was funny, and visually fun (there is another layer of a 50s movie, btw, the in-movie in-movie flashback when the 80s killer was a bullied teenager... and this one is black-and-white, obvs.) and the ending was clever. I like the genre, and I like slashers too, so I was excited about this one and it didn't disappoint.

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How The Final Girls Turned A Crazy Genre Mash-Up Into A Heartfelt Movie About Death

 

From the very beginnings of the project, neither designing the villain or the film's acute awareness of itself took away from the true core of the movie. What would it be like for a daughter to talk to the mother she tragically lost?

This is why I like the movie so much, this is the thing that's most valuable about it, and I say this as a huge fan of comedy and who found the movie funny too.